To Feel
by Tim Bowling
The past tense of the verb
and I am back in childhood’s
art class—“Today, we are going
to make a present for your parents
out of macaroni and felt
out of paper clips and felt
out of the tears of divorce
and long November rain and
the corpse of a grasshopper
and the back-of-a-baby’s-
mouth-silk smoothpool pocket and the terrifying
clunk of generation and
felt. There are no lines
to cut along or keep
the colours in. You’re
on your own. At 3:15
outside this clutch of years
no longer than your dog’s
life span, Time will arrive
in the Halloween mask
your grandparents fashioned
out of polio, foreclosures
and papier-mâché
to take you to the sea
where you will go like gleaners
between the velvet water
and the felt indifferences
over this spinning clay sphere
held in no hands, made
without love, lovelier
than the intense attraction
between your eye-songs
and these desperate invocations of your little wanting heart.
Tim Bowling of Edmonton, Alberta is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently his Selected Poems. He has been twice nominated for the Governor General’s Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow.